For 12 years from 1995, my Chinese wife and I were consultants to the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music in Britain. A great part of our remit was to promote the board’s exams in mainland China and in the course of this, we attended many meetings between the CEO from Britain and various people in China, ranging from government officials to businessmen and musicians.
My wife acted as interpreter for all the sessions. As a Westerner who has lived in Hong Kong since 1970, I was prepared for what transpired.
The Westerner approached the discussion like the proverbial bull in a china shop, and would have smashed all the contents at one go, had my wife not also been fully prepared for the basic lack of understanding between the two sides. She had to begin each interpretation by painting the background, and then putting what was said in terms which the other side could comprehend. This was true both ways, and with my limited grasp of Cantonese, I was able to see how clever she was in angling discussions so that relations were not immediately broken off.
The pity of it is that there are so few Westerners who have any real understanding of how Chinese people think and feel, or what their aspirations really are. In the world of diplomacy today, there seems little hope of any constructive cooperation between the two sides.
Part of the answer, I think, lies in both sides getting hold of really good advisers, and actually listening to what they have to say. In the case of US President Donald Trump, this is clearly an impossibility, but the Chinese side might perhaps do more in this way, and so help to avoid yet more stupidity in world affairs.
